


War, or Peace, or Whatever This Is

by Slyboots



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Cynicism, Dark, Eugenics, F/M, Fic Exchange, Hopeful Ending, Wizarding Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:17:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4582176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyboots/pseuds/Slyboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fall in line, that’s the way, and never mind who gives the orders. Carrying on, that’s the British national sport."</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Fall of the Ministry of Magic, Andromeda Tonks does what little good she can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	War, or Peace, or Whatever This Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [igrockspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/gifts).



> Written for igrockspock in Rarepair Fest 2015. Loosely inspired by your suggestion that Andromeda protected Ted without his knowledge—in the end, it evolved into a story about Andromeda sticking to her principles, and in so doing, perhaps failing to protect anyone.

I. A Black Woman

Twice she cried out. Her body could not hold.

 

“There’s a new order a-coming,” said the man in the mask, and she knew him. Bootblack eyes and mummy-thin lips, she knew from glassy memory—

“A new order, yes,” said Andromeda Tonks between breaths. “And not yours, Rabastan.”

He flicked his wand, muttering “Crucio,” and she slid sideways. The moment engulfed her.

She must have screamed, but did not know it.

 

Ted did not cry out, and that frightened her more.

 

_A new order’s a-coming_ , she thought in dizzy dreams, _and the old must be purged—_

_—and here are the purgatives, the leeches—_

Mulciber was speaking, and she knew him, too, of old, and a silver instrument glittered in Rabastan Lestrange’s mummy-hands. He knelt, out of her sight.

_—Not Ted, not Ted—_

She did not cry out.

“Weak jaw,” said Lestrange, whose jaw was weaker, “and mongrel mouth.” His shadow twisted, long and scarecrow-gaunt on their slashed wallpaper, and the calipers in his hands clicked like skeleton teeth. “Nasty blood, this one.”

_Nasty blood, earthy blood, and mine is sweet. Drink of me, suck me dry—_

_—A Black woman bleeds in her own time, for her own reasons, and all her blood is pure._

 

“Leave him,” she said, through skeleton-dry teeth.

He did not moan. For an instant she thought he must be dead.

“Hold her,” rasped Mulciber, and Lestrange snorted and hissed through his mask.

“There’ll be widowers plenty when the new order comes, Madam Black. Greengrass and Bones and Urquhart, oh, yes. Plenty of men, pure as you please, plenty of men—”

“To the devil with your new order,” said Andromeda, choking-cold. “My name is Tonks.”

 

They were not Nymphadora’s words, or Ted’s, echoing dusty out of some crevice of memory. In the moment, they were hers.

 

After that she did not remember much.

When Lestrange probed her, cooing and clucking, pinching her fingers and tracing her eyelid with his wand, she did not spit in his face.

She had gone dry, dry as mummy-hands and goblin gold and the bones of purebloods.

_A Black woman dies as she lived. A Tonks woman dies like an animal, and she’s barely remembered at all._

Well—

—she could live with that.

 

And then Ted was shaking her awake.

“They’ve gone. Scarpered when they saw you’d fainted, I imagine. Didn’t want to shed any pure blood.”

Andromeda raised her head. It was all she could manage. “What—”

“Happened?” said Ted with a grim smile. “If I had to guess, ‘Dromeda—and I could be wrong—I’d say there’s a new order a-coming.”

They laughed until their bodies gave out, until they collapsed wheezing on their kitchen floor. Until at last Andromeda shrugged Ted’s warm and shaking hands away, and dizzy, rose to see the damage.

 

_II. The First Night_

 

“It could be worse,” she said to the night. The garden lay in bitter ruin. Her roses hung black and withered, like so many dead heads; her windowboxes they had blasted to streaky cinders. Ted’s petunias—how proud he had been of his petunias, and how proud she had been, too, of his pride—their hexes had scattered in heaps across the lawn.

“We have our dignity,” she said, as she limped inside, both hands on the doorframe. “Ted, we have our dignity.”

“Oh, sure,” said Ted, but kindly.

She paused, lips pursed, clutching her torn robes closed. “Neither of us let slip—”

“Not a dicky-bird,” said Ted. “You were good.”

“Yes,” said Andromeda, amid the ruins of her home. “Yes, we were.”

 

“Your mother’s had a shock,” she heard him murmur into crackling flames. “They worked her over pretty hard.”

“Hardly,” said Andromeda, with a little cough. Ted had propped her up in the kitchen; a phial of Pepper-Up Potion smoldered in her numb hands. “We got a little visit from a washed-out Healer and a tin-pot sadist. If they’d meant anything serious—” She coughed again. Ted glanced up, eyes wide with concern. “They’d have sent her aunt.”

 

“Dora’s not coming tonight,” said Ted at last, straightening. “The Order’s checking in on a few of the others, the ones they couldn’t reach—”

“Dead,” said Andromeda, through sips of Pepper-Up Potion. “Dead, or Imperiused, or gone over.”

“Ah, ‘Dromeda, don’t say that.” His round face was pale as wax. “Of course, a few of them might be—”

Andromeda raised her hand. In the dim lamplight her bruises were the color of raw meat. “Dedalus Diggle, half-blood.” She lowered one finger. “Muriel Prewett, blood traitor.” She lowered another. “Any Auror at the Ministry tonight’s as good as Imperiused.” Another finger. “If they haven’t just dissolved the Aurors. But no, they wouldn’t be that foolish—”

“Too obvious,” agreed Ted. He settled at the kitchen table opposite her, fidgeting with his wand. “But the Aurors are tough. They’ll have been trained to—”

“Barty Crouch was tough,” said Andromeda. “Alastor Moody was tough. The Longbottoms were tough.”

A car rumbled in the distance, exhaust belching.

“You and I are tough,” said Andromeda quietly. “It’s not enough. They _will_ break us, Edward.”

Ted met her gaze.

_Oh, Ted, this isn’t your world, this never was—_

_—they aren’t logical, Ted, they don’t think the way—the way solid everyday people do—_

_—the way Muggleborns do—_

“They didn’t break you,” he said, as she’d feared he would.

“They didn’t try very hard,” said Andromeda curtly. “We don’t know anything, Ted. We’re not a threat—”

Ted cut her off. “You’re a Black. Blood traitor or not, you’re a Black. They wouldn’t dare.”

She kept her face neutral, mask-hard. Her eyes softened.

And it saved me, Ted, and it won’t save you again.

But some things were too crude—

_—dirty blood, dirty words—_

—for kitchen-table conversation. Even now, there were things she would not say.

“I’m a Tonks,” she said, and raised the potion to her mouth. Her ears squealed and steamed; the pain in her skull rattled to fever-pitch; and through the clouds of steam, Ted watched her, grim, frightened.

 

They cooked a meager supper that night, Ted rummaging through the ransacked larder as Andromeda stoked the fire.

“Don’t you wish you were a Black now?” he called, tossing over a battered jar of porridge oats. “Be nice to have a house-elf, eh—”

“Wishing won’t make it true,” she called back, just as merrily.

The cold sat in her belly like a stone. In distant flickers she saw Nymphadora’s face, Nymphadora who was no Black at all—

But they did not speak of Nymphadora as they ate.

“Can’t even tell what was in there,” said Ted, indicating the larder. “You’d think we’d got Harry Potter stuffed away with the old onions, the way those Death Eaters tore it up—”

And she did laugh at that. “Tonight, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is eating our tomatoes.”

He fed her a spoonful of porridge, and she laughed and squeezed his hand, and still the chill hung between them like a whispered curse.

“Think it’s safe to go out?” he said at last. “Haven’t seen the cat around, have you?”

Andromeda peered through the window. Their gates were high, their hedges dense, and the toffee-golden light of Muggle lamps streamed through the cracks. Down the street, someone was laughing, laughing—

_A Concealment Charm here, a bed of Stifling Wort there, and no one will hear your screams. You’ll die neatly, tucked away conveniently, while rosy-cheeked Muggle children splish-splash in their new swimming pool, and there’ll be no warning—_

She shook it off.

_No one forced you to live with Muggles._

“ _Homenum revelio_ ,” she murmured, pointing her wand at the window.

They waited.

“I’d be careful if I were you,” said Andromeda, and in this she heard: _But I’m not going to back down, and neither are you, Ted. I know you too well._

_And what’s worse, I know myself just well enough._

 

“Life goes on,” said Andromeda, at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Life has to go on, Ted.”

The door clicked open, and a buoyant tray—nearly silver, she’d said at the flea market, so many lifetimes ago, and Ted had rolled his eyes and grinned his wry-tight grin—soared into the bedroom like a glittering carpet. Two heaping bowls of chocolate ice cream jounced and clattered.

“With or without us,” said Ted from the doorway. “I stood out there calling for Lumpy—”

“Yes, I know. I heard you.”

“She’ll come or she won’t—”

“I left out a bowl,” said Andromeda. “She’ll come when she’s hungry.”

They exchanged looks. The ice cream tray settled, with a breathy puff, into Andromeda’s lap.

“We can hope,” said Andromeda quietly.

“That we can.” Ted settled, looking relieved, at the edge of the bed. “Not as good as—as Wizard-made, but it’ll do. American brand. Funny name on the package.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely, Ted.”

He lifted the first spoonful to her mouth.

It was, indeed, not as good as Fortescue’s. Some things did not bear saying.

 

_Life goes on._

 

“I’m sorry, ‘Dromeda,” he muttered after a while. “I can’t do it.”

She laid a hand on his broad back. He rolled off her with a groan, kissing her with chocolate on his breath.

“I don’t blame you,” she said into the vacancy he’d left.

“The old plumbing—”

“It was a silly idea,” she said.

“It was,” said Ted. “You’ve had—” He groped for meaning in the dark. “A shock.”

“You’ve done enough,” she said, watching the lamplight leak across the ceiling. “I’ll live.”

“And if you get your head blown off tomorrow—”

“I’m a Black,” she said at last. It sounded ugly, obscene, old and raddled and leaking pus between them.

But there was strength in it, too. Certainty.

“You’re the one they’ll be after, Ted.”

 

_III. Life Goes On_

 

She rose early, in the uncertain cold, and bathed quickly.

“Better dress to kill,” said her reflection, harsh and white. Haglike already—or was that the set in her jaw, the fear in her eyes, the ragged twitch at the corner of her mouth?

“Let me be a hag, then,” said Andromeda, in supreme tones. Lestrange’s fingers had left odd marks on her throat; they crumpled as she tightened her jaw.

Her reflection nodded, unimpressed. “After that performance yesterday?” From her own hair she pulled a jeweled net, from her ears spiders in amber. In the cabinet behind the mirror, Andromeda heard them clank into existence. “Wear the white robes. The better to set off the blood.”

 

“Rules for everything, you purebloods,” said Ted as she returned. He’d let the Daily Prophet owl in, and his thinning hair rippled in the draft through the ceiling window. She cracked half a smile, to show willing. “You’re going in today?”

“The Minister will,” she said coolly, “whoever it is now. And his cronies. One must show willing.”

Ted scanned the paper as she dressed. “You know a Pius Thicknesse?”

She stopped cold, collar half-buttoned.

“Ah,” said Ted. “That’s about—”

“What one would expect,” said Andromeda, hearing Thicknesse’s carping voice in the thin breeze, the light birdsong. And she had expected this, or worse—yet her hands were cold and her tongue was numb, and even now her sister might be arriving at the Ministry to welcome Thicknesse—

Lightly, lightly, she danced around Narcissa’s name.

And _why, why_ did the world keep turning, when a second war would blow them all to smithereens, when the stupidity of it—

She kissed Ted with tight lips. Checked her reflection.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “Andromeda.”

“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “And if you’re going in—”

Ted looked uncomfortable. “Well, I—”

“Check on Nymphadora before you go,” she said. “If you go.”

 

“I love you,” she said at the foot of the stairs. Whether Ted heard her, she could not guess.

At the kitchen window she paused. Steeled herself. Glanced outside.

The cat’s bowl remained untouched. Dew had darkened the kibble.

Andromeda gritted her teeth, took a pinch of Floo powder, and was gone.

 

_A new order’s a-coming._

 

She had expected—

—Scrimgeour’s men strung up like blackbirds on a telephone wire—

—the Dark Mark flapping on brute banners—

—Narcissa Malfoy at the gates of the Ministry of Magic, smiling her contained smile, glowing—

—and yet how very normal it was, after all. There was a wound in the world, You-Know-Who held the Ministry, and Andromeda Tonks walked to work, as she had done every day (Saturdays off) since Nymphadora had been old enough to toast her own sandwich—

A bald and senseless buzzing rose in her ears. She could not take it in.

There was the Fountain of Magical Brethren, still glistening gold (though just you wait); there were the crowds, a bit fewer in number now, and paler-faced; there was the security desk, manned not by Eric but by a hulking witch.

_Fall in line, that’s the way, and never mind who gives the orders. Carrying on, that’s the British national sport._

It was all so wrong.

 

The blow fell at half past nine.

The Obliviator Squad’s offices had buzzed all morning, aflutter with memos; her assistant, Cokeworth, snatched them down as fast as he could read them.

They were all, nastily, the same.

“Muggle family of four in Newcastle-”

“Send Babcock,” said Andromeda automatically. Cokeworth snapped his fingers; a moment later, they heard Babcock Disapparate.

“A Muggle child, aged six—”

“Six?”

Cokeworth eyed her face, anxious, deflating. For an instant Andromeda felt the surging urge to curse.

“Send whoever’s closest,” she said. “There aren’t any other—”

“Any other assignments, Madam Tonks?” said Cokeworth faintly. He smelt of weak tea and Firewhiskey.

_My mother would have laughed. Oh, my mother would have laughed._

Andromeda stared at the map of Britain pinned above her desk. As she watched, the pushpin in Newcastle sprouted thin legs, heaved itself free, and scuttled over to Surrey.

_They’re coming in faster than we can handle them._

Andromeda’s lip curled. “I take it there was some fun last night, Mr. Cokeworth? Some excitement? Perhaps a spot of revelry?”

Cokeworth raised his eyebrows. “No, ma’am. Nothing.”

“Don’t cod me, Cokeworth,” said Andromeda in cruder tones. His eyebrows flew up still higher, and a damp and savage pleasure crackled inside her. “At this rate, the Muggles are going to notice—”

And that was the shame, the sin and shame, that they might not.

“—and _then_ where will we be, Mr. Cokeworth? Where?”

Cokeworth adjusted his glasses. His voice rose to an offended teakettle hiss. “Nowhere, madam. However great in numbers—however fecund—Muggles will never assault the Ministry. And if they assault, they cannot hope to take, and if taken, cannot hold—”

“Won’t that be the day,” said Andromeda with a snort. “I hope you have a little flat in Peru, Cokeworth. Somewhere nice and quiet.”

The pins scuttled and clattered, and Cokeworth’s cheeks went gray.

“And when the war comes,” said Andromeda, in her mother’s tidy voice, “I do hope you make it there.”

 

But there was only so far, after all, one could push a man like Cokeworth.

Obliviators came, and Obliviators went, and Andromeda’s head throbbed with something that was not quite guilt.

 

Dorsey left at half eleven, white-faced, and did not return. Within minutes, navy-robed Magical Maintenance workers appeared to scour her desk.

Andromeda shouldered past Cokeworth, breathing deep. _Fall in line. Don’t make a fuss._

_Do what you will, but do it with tact and brains, and know what you’re in for—_

“Madam Tonks!” said Cokeworth, scandalized, but Andromeda was bearing down on them now.

“May I ask why—”

“Rubina Dorsey resigned,” said one of them, backing up, wand in hand. Dorsey’s family photos wobbled, their inhabitants squeaking and cowering. “Gone, she is. Done a bunk.”

“I received no resignation,” said Andromeda, as coldly as she could muster (though some impulse in her whispered, _Laying it all on the peons, Miss Black? And to hell with Thicknesse?_ ).

“Ah,” said the little man, shifting his weight, “but Yaxley—”

“Is Yaxley the head of the Obliviator Squad?” snapped Andromeda. “I want an explanation, and I mean to get one. Whether from you or Yaxley, I don’t much care.”

“Yaxley gave his order,” said the other Magical Maintenance worker, a squat little witch with mulish eyes. “He’s got every right.”

“Has he?” said Andromeda icily.

“Bad day for the Ministry,” said the man. “A fellow comes in for work and he decides ‘round lunchtime, oh, he don’t like this new Minister, and he heads off for Majorca and don’t leave no note. Not your fault. Not Yaxley’s fault. Not mine,” he added hastily.

“ _That_ I believe,” said Andromeda. “Go on, then. Move along. Do your job. Tell Mr. Yaxley it’s not his fault.”

 

She sank into her chair, feeling her face go stony, resisting the urge to clutch her temples.

 

By lunchtime, it seemed, every office was missing staff. Some had sent in feeble excuses that morning; others, like Dorsey, had vanished from their desks.

Stares and silence followed Andromeda through the corridors. By this she knew that Nymphadora, too, was absent from work.

_Dora, you precious silly thing. I thought I raised you better._

_You’ll bring the world down on your father’s head, and mine too, into the bargain._

_Yes_ , said another voice inside her, _and good riddance. An old Obliviator too scared to meet Thicknesse’s eye, too scared to leave her own desk—_

Such was the ebb and flow, the natural rhythm of Andromeda’s fear.

 

At two, she got Yaxley’s memo.

 

Yaxley’s office felt deserted, thick with silence. For an instant she could not place the feeling.

Her jaw tightened.

The office had been stripped to the paneling. Yaxley’s desk was bare, his walls spotless; as she watched, he flicked his wand, stowing the curtains in the briefcase open on his desk.

“Ah, Mrs. Tonks. Sit.”

And Yaxley did not conceal his sneer now (if, really, he ever had).

Andromeda sat, but slowly, and her eyes did not leave his.

“You ought to hear it here first,” said Yaxley, idly flicking his wand. “The Minister has just signed a law—top priority, highly urgent—”

She gripped her own wand.

“—allowing, indeed, _requiring_ Obliviators to take on some additional duties. Properly compensated, of course, if that matters to you.”

“It might,” said Andromeda slowly, thinking of Cokeworth. “And how do you justify—”

Yaxley laughed, and acrid sparks shot from his wand. “You said it yourself, Mrs. Tonks, or so I’m told. The Mudbloods are moving against us.”

Andromeda did not gape, did not curse. Some inner catch restrained her.

“I’ve been promoted,” said Yaxley, with a repressive smile. “The Department of Magical Law Enforcement needs a sensible hand on the leash. Pureblood families up and down the country were harassed last night, I’m told.”

“And mine,” said Andromeda softly.

“And yours,” said Yaxley. “Soon enough it won’t be so safe to be a blood traitor, Mrs. Tonks. I’d think on that.”

He flicked his wand again, drawing a scroll from midair.

“By the terms of this law,” he recited, in a monotone given a sting by his sneer, “Obliviators will be permitted to modify the memories of any witch, wizard, or creature believed to be acting against, conspiring to act against, or inciting others to act against the interests of the greater Wizarding community. Rather an effective deterrent, if you ask me. Hang round with the wrong crowd in Diagon Alley, wake up in Aberdeen without your memory—” He snapped his fingers. “A first step, to be sure. But we won’t pussyfoot forever, Tonks. Do you understand me?”

“Quite,” said Andromeda. Her fists clenched. Unclenched. “Quite.”

 

The first case came minutes later, without ceremony. A golden pin scuttled from her desk, swinging spiderlike onto the map, and sank its tip deep; as Andromeda watched, appalled, its golden head bloated and turned bruise-green.

“London,” said Cokeworth beside her. “Camberwell Grove.”

“Thank you, Cokeworth,” said Andromeda. Already she was rising to her feet. “How many?”

“One,” said Cokeworth, blinking. “Nineteen years old, half-blood, reported for inciting mayhem—”

“Thank you, Cokeworth.”

She snatched the memo from his hand. Before he could protest, she was gone.

 

Camberwell Grove was dense with cars, its bricked facades numb and indifferent. On first glance she missed the door.

She knocked. It did to knock.

 

Life went on for Dennis Atwell, nineteen, half-blood, much as before.

 

_A new order’s a-coming._

 

She left the Ministry late and Disillusioned herself before Disapparating.

Andromeda did not look round. Her feet knew the lay of the village.

She stopped, as she often stopped, between a chemist’s and a dusty pet shop. The electronics dealer’s windows were barred, its sign dim; in pride of place sat a dusty television. It was on.

It was often on.

Andromeda glanced round. She was alone.

“And finally, viewers,” said Ted, muffled and staticky, absurd-looking and sweet in his Muggle suit, “we have reports of a nationwide epidemic of—”

_—memory loss—_

“—severe ragweed allergies this summer. At least three hospitalizations have been reported so far, with more, no doubt, to come. Remember, folks, there’s no cure, only prevention, so keep those windows closed.”

Andromeda shook her head, feeling herself smile—really smile—for the first time that day.

 

_IV. Acts of War_

 

“So you could modify my memory,” said Ted over supper, “for any reason you please. All nice and legal.”

“Yes. It comes down to that.”

Ted regarded her, fork hovering halfway to his lips. “How d’you justify that, then?”

_And how do you justify that, Mr. Yaxley?_

Andromeda did not flush. “They’re calling it war.” Her voice was steady. “The state of war, by nature, justifies acts of war—”

“Don’t philosophize at me,” said Ted. “War, all right. War between purebloods and Mudbloods—”

“Ted!”

“I’ve heard the word,” he said, with an easy shrug. She envied him that ease. “Might as well not be precious about it.”

“I’m not being _precious_ , Edward.” Now she did flush, stung. “The reality is, I’m in an extraordinarily tight position politically—”

“You’re doing your job,” said Ted, “which is what Thicknesse wants.”

She held her retort. On the sideboard, Ted’s family whispered and huddled in their frames; Andromeda had insisted upon charming the photographs. Now, looking at them, she felt faintly—piously—ill.

“Yes,” said Andromeda. “I am.” She sipped her wine, closing her eyes. “It’s that or going on the run, Ted.”

He touched her hand. She did not pull away.

“The _new order_ ,” she said, lip curling. “They’ve promoted Yaxley—”

“Not your boss? Can’t find his arse with his wand straight up it? That Yaxley?”

Her lips twitched. “The very one. You must remember him, he was in Slytherin with me, a few years ahead.”

“That settles it, then,” said Ted, squeezing her hand. “Get chummy with him. Play the game. If it’s war, Andromeda—”

“I won’t be mocked at my own table,” she said, but gently. “I have no currency with Yaxley, Ted. Or any of them. As you know full well, so don’t give me—”

“Bull,” said Ted. “You’ve got—”

“My Black blood,” said Andromeda wearily. “You _are_ mocking me.”

 

Round and round they went, looping like a scratched photograph. The argument carried them through supper, through Lumpy, through washing up and settling down to a long night.

The facts, such as they were, were indisputable, which made them all the more troublesome.

 

“You should’ve gone right to the top,” said Ted, pouring himself a gin. “A talented witch like you—”

“Arthur Weasley is talented, Ted, and look where he is.” Her Scouring Charm whisked over the counters, taking off the top layer of polish as it went. “Half the Ministry is talented—”

Ted snorted.

“It’s birth,” she said. “Birth and brown-nosing and a little bit of luck.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Ted, but evenly. “You thought you’d be department head in twenty years—we talked about it—”

“I was naive.” A froth of soap slopped over the rim of the sink. “You know I was naive.”

“You told me it’d all be better after the war—”

“I _thought_ ,” she said fiercely, “half the purebloods would be in Azkaban, Ted. You believed me, don’t pretend you—”

“And,” said Ted, “you’d be the only one left, then?”

This she did not dignify with a response.

 

“Remember,” he said later, as they undressed for bed, “when we thought the world was going to change?”

“The terrible duty of the young,” said Andromeda, pulling her hair from its net, “is to believe in change. The burden of the old is to know it’s impossible.”

“You’re philosophizing again.”

“If I leave,” she said, snuffing the candle, “they may not kill me, Ted. But they will kill you, and they will install a Death Eater in my place—”

“Ah, they won’t,” said Ted. “Death Eaters are valuable. No sense wasting one there.”

They settled into the bed. The silence crackled, hot with the unsaid.

“You could—”

“Divorce you,” said Andromeda. “Modify your memory, no doubt. Ally myself—and my limited gifts, I suppose—with He-who-must-not-be-named—”

“Take up with Rabastan Lestrange,” said Ted. “I hear he’s available.”

“ _Don’t_ , Ted.” She groped for his shoulder. In the dark he felt real, realer than anything. “And assume my rightful place on the Wizengamot, if it exists by then. And finally get something done.”

“But you won’t.”

“No,” said Andromeda. “I shan’t.”

For some minutes they lay in silence.

“Dora’s done well for herself,” said Ted. “Better than us.”

She turned her head. “Every mother’s dream.”

“She’ll get out of this all right.”

“When the purebloods die out.”

“Ah, ‘Dromeda—”

 

She lay awake ‘til Ted’s snoring washed over her.

 

_V. Purebloods_

 

She counted their names like a litany of the dead.

The Gaunts.

The Crouches.

The Blacks.

_Extinct in the male line,_ said a waspish voice. Narcissa’s voice. _In the female line—_

 

_O brave new world,_ thought Andromeda, and then: _Cissy, darling dear, look what I’ve become. Quoting Muggle poets—_

_Ted’s poets—_

_—when in truth, I can’t remember our own—_

 

_O brave new world, that has such people in’t._

 

_VI. Accidents and Catastrophes_

 

Days passed in fits and starts: blurry gray hours in the Obliviator Headquarters were punctuated, without warning, by incidents bright and sharp as blood.

 

In the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee’s dingy next-door offices, Jimmy Harper broke down screaming and was dragged off by Hit Wizards.

A few Obliviators glanced up, their faces taut with shock; Andromeda hushed them with a flick of her quill.

“Carry on,” she said, voice tomb-hard, and she relished Cokeworth’s wince.

 

“Husband’s profession?”

“Newsreader.”

“I see,” said Dolores Umbridge softly. “And, ah—how long has he been employed in this, er, _capacity_?”

“Eighteen years.”

Umbridge tutted, her mouth stretching tight. “But of course. You, of all witches, ought to know how reluctant Wizarding employers are to take on staff with uncertain loyalties.”

“Edward received job offers,” said Andromeda, in casual tones, “from the _Daily Prophet_ and the Ministry’s own Office of Misinformation—though both may, of course, have conveniently _forgotten_.”

“And he declined both?” Umbridge’s voice quivered; she would, Andromeda thought, have never passed muster at the Black dining-room table.

“Naturally,” she said, supremely indifferent.

 

Several times she passed Arthur Weasley in the corridor. Their eyes did not meet.

 

“They say she’s half-blood,” muttered Cokeworth one day. “A coarse thing like her, wouldn’t be surprised—”

“On the contrary,” said Andromeda, lips thin. “Madam Umbridge is a true pureblood in every respect.”

 

Jonathan Avery was installed, with no fanfare, as Head of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.

“Look on the bright side,” Ted said to Andromeda that night. “If they wanted to promote him—”

“Cornelius Fudge was Head of Accidents and Catastrophes,” said Andromeda grimly, and that ended it.

 

Three Magical Maintenance wizards were questioned for vandalizing Avery’s office. Surely, the gossips agreed, they could not have been guilty—for what Mudblood could have Transfigured a whole Ministry office into a prison cell, or scrawled the old accusations in shining silver?

The screams, it was generally agreed, had been Avery’s own.

 

The next day, the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee’s offices were deserted. Andromeda, through her half-open office door, watched Avery himself Vanish their belongings, pacing back and forth between cubicles.

“Missed a spot, Johnny,” she murmured. Avery jerked, whirling to face her, eyes popping.

Andromeda slid the door shut.

 

“Whatever orders he may give you,” she told the Obliviator Squad later, keeping her voice steady, “obey them as you would mine. This is not the time for defiance.”

They shuffled, mumbled, cast each other uncertain glances. Andromeda’s heart sank.

“We are at war,” she continued, “with ignorance, with small-mindedness, with those who would destroy us. Mr. Yaxley and Mr. Avery have told you this is war. They are not wrong. And in war, regardless of personal feelings—”

“Madam,” said Peasegood, stepping forward, “with due respect—”

“You, too, Peasegood.” Andromeda pursed her lips. “You are half-blood, are you not?”

He stopped short.

“Obey your orders,” said Andromeda coolly. “I won’t be the last to ask you your blood status, and I suggest you look sharper than that about it. Dismissed.”

 

“I hear you’re an Avery supporter,” said Ted, filling the cat’s bowl. It had been a week and a half since the Death Eaters’ visit, and Lumpy had made no appearance; yet her bowl sat, full and waiting, night and day, on the back step.

“Really?” said Andromeda lightly. “How funny. That’s more than I’ve heard.”

The sun hung low and dissatisfied in the orange sky. Down the street, a Muggle boy teetered on his tricycle. Andromeda smiled and waved; the boy, waving back, overbalanced and toppled.

“I have an obligation to my staff,” she said. “To keep them safe. The other departments are losing members by the day.”

For long minutes Ted did not respond. The Muggle boy hoisted himself back onto his tricycle, whimpering, and pedaled off.

“D’you really think you’re keeping them safe?”

 

_VII. Blood Status_

 

August passed in a flurry of new laws: the British Centaur Naturalization Program; the Muggle-Born Registration Act; the Long-Distance Apparition Regulation Act; and, to Ted’s fury, Educational Decree Number Thirty.

“ _Blood Status,_ Andromeda!” he repeated over and over. “For God’s sake—”

And to this she had no reply.

 

Nymphadora’s owl arrived on the sunset breeze, on the last weekend in August. Andromeda read the letter through twice, three times, an odd sadness twitching in her throat:

_We lost the flat in London. We’ve been expecting it—the landlord’s been very shirty with Remus—but it couldn’t have happened at a worse time._

“She’s coming back?” said Ted from behind her. “Dora’s coming home?”

“Doing well for herself, is she?” said Andromeda with a bitter smile. “Well, get the bookshelves out of her room. She’s quite convinced you’ve made it into ‘that library you were always talking about,’ and I’d hate to see her proven right.”

 

After the first few weeks’ upsurge of work, the Obliviators’ caseload had dropped dramatically. “They’re secure in their power,” Andromeda told Ted one night, the calm in her voice startling even her. “They have the Hit Wizards—what’s left of them—dragging their enemies off openly now. No need to pussyfoot around.”

In these last words she heard Yaxley’s sneer, and Ted must have heard it too, for he grimaced and did not reply.

Yet Andromeda often found herself staying late at work. Her paperwork had tripled, for each case required separate reports to Avery, Umbridge, and the newly-formed Ministry Undesirable Activities Committee; in her darker moments, when her head was clear and her mind free to think, she suspected that Umbridge was keeping her leashed.

“She can’t read it all,” she told Ted. “I don’t doubt she’s getting hundreds of these reports. It’s busywork, nothing more.”

“Of course it is,” said Nymphadora from the fire. She had arrived a few days after her letter, alone, with a single bag. “They want you to apply for a transfer, so they can turn it down.”

“Or worse,” said Andromeda dryly, “so they can approve it. You wouldn’t know, Nymphadora, you haven’t been to the Ministry—”

Nymphadora’s eyes narrowed. A wave of red washed through her hair. “Remus and I were keeping a close watch. They’re installing Death Eaters faster than the Undesirables—” She pronounced it with a weary snarl. “—can disappear.”

“They are,” said Andromeda, “which makes it very hard to know whom to work on. Umbridge is out, of course, as is Yaxley, but some of the second-raters might be amenable to a bribe.”

“But,” Nymphadora shot back, “being peons, they’re not in any position to influence—”

“Precisely.” Andromeda sighed. “Ted, I wash my hands of this girl. She’s far too cynical for her age.”

 

Complicating matters, half their income was worse than useless for bribes. Andromeda did not dare risk changing Muggle money at Gringotts, and Ted’s salary now went into a secure Muggle savings account: “In case of emergencies,” he said, when Nymphadora pressed him. “I’ve always had one foot in the Muggle world—”

“By choice,” said Andromeda sharply, thinking of Umbridge.

“—and, when I go into hiding, I expect I’ll do it there.”

From the look on Nymphadora’s face, she did not believe this any more than Andromeda did.

 

“So you are going into hiding,” she said later that night. “Well. That will make things easier.”

 

In mid-September she arrived at work to find Peasegood cleaning out his desk, his face rubbery and gray; he seemed to have shrunk several sizes overnight.

“I’ve been accused,” he breathed. “They say I’m too light on the Mudbloods—”

It was a word she had never heard from Peasegood’s mouth.

“My mother was American,” he added, his eyes darting, “and she can’t get proper Blood Status here. I’m no better than a Mudblood, that’s what they’re saying—”

Andromeda breathed deep. Fury seeped through her like a chill.

“Who? Who is saying this?”

“I am,” rasped a sickeningly familiar voice. “Madam Black, how do you do?”

Andromeda did not whirl, did not cry out. “I suppose you measured his cheekbones, then?”

“No need,” said Rabastan Lestrange. Unmasked, he looked shockingly aged. Behind his spectacles his dark eyes were sunken deep. “The trained eye couldn’t miss it. The man has the jaws of an ape.”

“That’ll do, Lestrange,” said Avery from the corridor. To Andromeda he added, with a contained and bureaucratic leer, “Half-blood, is he? You’ve been smuggling Mudbloods under my nose, Tonks, and I won’t have it, I won’t—”

Andromeda set her jaw. “This man was a half-blood under Scrimgeour, Mr. Avery, and a half-blood under Fudge. Am I to gather that a man’s established Blood Status—”

“Careful,” said Avery. “I’m told you’ve got a half-blood daughter at home, Tonks. Wouldn’t want—”

“Immaterial,” cut in Lestrange, with a cool sniff. “The Tonks girl is _undeniably_ half-blood. She has her mother’s delicacy of feature, I’m told, though, of course, marred by—”

“Get out,” said Avery, looking bored. “Peasegood, you’ll be summoned for questioning at the Ministry’s convenience. Now get out of my sight.”

Andromeda stared. For an instant she was seized by the mad urge to hex Avery to dust, to wrap her hands around Lestrange’s skinny throat and squeeze—

But she kept her temper. “I expect Peasegood will be cleared in due time,” she said, loudly enough for him to hear as he slunk away. “And Mr. Lestrange, if you examined every pureblood in Britain, I don’t doubt that they would pass muster—so long as you were told just what to look for!”

Lestrange’s nostrils flared; a muscle worked in his temple. “There are more Mudbloods in this country,” he said slowly, his light accent turning somehow slick and cold, “than you might imagine, Madam Black. And we will root them out. And if the Obliviator Squad is proven rotten, lousy with these human worms—” He snapped his fingers. “Then I don’t see very much reason for it to exist.”

“Get _out_ ,” snarled Avery. “Out of my department.”

“ _Your_ department,” rasped Lestrange, looking thoughtful. “Not for long, I don’t imagine. Not for long.”

 

“Well,” said Ted at home, “stands to reason they’d send someone important eventually.”

“To pressure me,” said Andromeda, dazed with anger. “Chief Obliviator, for heaven’s sake. It’s absurd.”

“Bellatrix is behind this.”

They jumped; neither of them had heard Nymphadora come in. Her face was scarlet, her eyes cold.

“She’s been targeting me since I married Remus. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown herself yet. It’s not like her.”

“No,” said Andromeda softly. “No, I think she’s after me. Or Narcissa is. This is more her style.”

“Either way,” said Ted, “what can you do? Waltz into Malfoy Manor and say, hullo, I’d like to speak with you about You-Know-Who, care for a biscuit?”

Nymphadora laughed. Andromeda did not.

 

She heard of the security breach—a pretty name for it, she thought later, as if that was all it was—only after the fact. On the day of the break-in, Andromeda was interrogating Cokeworth in her office.

“I tolerated you,” she said crisply, “because I had to. Because Yaxley could have saddled me with someone much worse.”

Cokeworth’s eyes twitched. He could do nothing else.

“Have you been telling tales on me to Avery, too?”

Cokeworth’s gaze flicked to the right. Yes.

“I’ll believe that,” she said. “And did you turn in Peasegood?”

No.

“Are you sure, Cokeworth?” She kept her tone conversational. “I can do far worse to you than a Body-Bind Curse. Are you a pureblood, Cokeworth? You aren’t.”

No. No, he had not turned in Peasegood.

“Very well. Now, you and I know, Mr. Cokeworth, that the Obliviator Squad’s days are numbered. We are at war, and war demands more drastic measures.” Andromeda paused, letting Cokeworth sweat. “You will remember only this: I do not employ” (she sucked air) “Mudbloods. You have no cause to report on my squad.”

His eyes twitched again.

“Do you understand?” she asked, and the words—stiff and unnatural in her mind, theatrical—flowed as naturally as breath. “Good. Now. _Obliviate_.”

 

The rest of the day she spent, with a copy of Nature’s Nobility hidden below her desk, falsifying pedigrees.

 

The order came to dissolve the Obliviator Squad the next day. Stiff-backed, silent, Andromeda watched her staff file through Avery’s office.

She would not, she thought, easily forget the metallic scrape in Lestrange’s voice, or the click of his calipers.

“All but one,” he said, in a tone of displeased wonder, as the last ex-Obliviator left. “There are ways to fool the instruments, but none to fool the eye that knows how to see, and I see half-blood after disgraceful half-blood, oh, yes, and—”

“Shut it,” said Avery. “Well. I hope you’re satisfied, Tonks. No clout, no employees, no office—” His lips quirked. “No promotion.”

“Very well,” said Andromeda lightly, making them both twitch. “I expect the Minister will find a use for me soon enough.” She dropped her voice, glancing at the door. _Now or never._ “After all, my blood is impeccable.”

 

_VIII. Half a Black_

 

Days passed.

 

Narcissa ignored the first owl, and the second, or perhaps they never reached her.

 

_A Black woman lives as she expects to die—which, in my case, means sneaky and ashamed, I suppose._

 

Lumpy the cat’s skeleton, still lacy with rotting fur, was jinxed by night to the front door. Nymphadora and Ted spent three hours trying to get it down, with no success.

 

Cokeworth disappeared—stinking of Firewhiskey to the last, Andromeda suspected. She remembered the animal fear in his eyes, and felt an odd, resounding sort of emptiness.

 

The third letter Narcissa returned unopened. This Andromeda kept from Ted and Nymphadora, out of caution or shame.

 

Her days she filled, as best she could, with letter-writing. She was hampered, and hampered badly, in that Nymphadora judged it unsafe to contact the rest of the Order: “None of us were in touch toward the end,” she explained as they chopped vegetables. “Anyone who might have known anything was being watched. Kept us quiet.”

So the rumor mill did not turn as it might have. By evening, just before curfew, Andromeda haunted Diagon Alley, cloaked and veiled, listening to whatever scraps she might hear.

Some swore that Harry Potter had fled the country, others that Lucius Malfoy was a prisoner in his own home. A man with bloody gums offered to take her to the Malfoys, for a price, but grew evasive when she demanded proof. It was agreed that Bellatrix Lestrange walked free and proud, and many claimed influence with her—this Andromeda discounted.

But she had one lead remaining.

 

“Suppose,” she said to Lestrange one night at the Leaky Cauldron, “I were to divorce my husband—”

Lestrange made a small disappointed sound. “Your husband’s time is coming. There is a very great backlog of cases.” He eyed her accusingly over the rims of his spectacles.

“You found my staff clean,” she reminded him, though her stomach lurched. “I accept your judgment.”

The pub was nearly empty. Andromeda recognized a smattering of faces—all of them, she thought with a wave of disgust, pureblooded.

Lestrange shrugged. “The Dark Lord has left the filth for us lesser wizards to clean. Avery and Yaxley are no help, and Madam Umbridge—” He clicked his teeth. “She sees what she wishes to see. I cannot work under these conditions.”

“Suppose I were to divorce my husband,” said Andromeda cautiously. “To show willing.”

“Then Mulciber and Avery would be very surprised,” said Lestrange, sniffing something black and sparking. He grimaced. “Too weak. Always too weak. We must have a drink at my brother’s estate, Madam. There you will see real Wizarding hospitality—”

“When the war is over,” said Andromeda. “When we can walk freely.”

Lestrange sniffed. “The war is over, Madam. Now Wizarding blood must rule what magical blood has bought—and with Yaxley and Avery in charge—” He drained his goblet. “Revolting. I shall complain.”

Andromeda abandoned caution. “I want to speak to my sisters.”

He eyed her. “Your sisters? They will have no truck with a blood traitor, Madam Black. And I doubt it will avail you much.”

“So it’s true, then?” she pressed. “Narcissa and Lucius are prisoners? Bellatrix is—”

“Disfavored,” said Lestrange coolly. “Useful in war, but in peace, hardly.”

For a moment Andromeda was thrown. _Peace_?

“So much for the famed Black influence.” Lestrange clicked his teeth again. A wave of disgust went through Andromeda. “Your principles are admirable, Madam Black, if—of course—wrongheaded in every conceivable way. But they have not won you power.” He waved for another drink. “If you were to abandon that unfortunate Mudblood and stand alone, to ally yourself with the new order—the Dark Lord loves a famous convert, Madam Black. They will make an example of you. They will install you in the Wizengamot. They will give you what was yours by birth.”

Grimly, Andromeda nodded.

“I can walk freely,” said Rabastan Lestrange with a small, abashed smile, “because I am pureblooded, yes. But also because I am a younger son, heir to nothing but a name. Because I have never been important. Your sisters cannot make deals with you. They have too much to lose. And you—” He flicked his hand. “What have you to lose? A newsreader? Your _soul_? This is your moment, Madam Black. Stand tall.”

“ _Obliviate_ ,” Andromeda whispered. Lestrange’s eyes slid out of focus. He stared, uncomprehending, at his goblet.

“No,” said Andromeda clearly, “I will not allow you to examine my daughter.”

“What—but—” Lestrange blinked.

Andromeda rose to leave. “She is half a Black, Lestrange, and that is more than you will ever be.”

 

“I wouldn’t blame you, mind,” said Ted that night. They had opened the ceiling window, and the stars shone bright and indifferent over their heads. “I’ll have to run in the end. We’ve known that.”

“We have,” said Andromeda.

He kissed her collarbone, her throat, her jaw. She lay still as a corpse.

“I can take care of myself,” he said. “Been planning it for months.”

“I know,” said Andromeda, nettled.

“You could save lives—”

“I have saved lives.”

“You’ve been batting around the idea for—”

“I can’t do it,” said Andromeda. “I will not.”

In saying it, there was a strange certainty. A solidity.

“Ah, ‘Dromeda—”

_I wrote to my sister._ The thought came surging up her throat like a jet of bile. _I tortured a man. I saved lives, Ted—_

_—And I will not do this any longer. I will not be a model convert. I will not be Rabastan Lestrange’s prize specimen. I will not stand in front of the world and proclaim that my sisters were right—_

_I will not humiliate my husband and my daughter._

_A Black woman breaks before she bends, and my sisters broke, hard and brittle. And I will break, too, I suppose._

But instead she said, “I doubt being a Black will avail me very much anymore.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Mm.” She stroked Ted’s living skin. Pulled him close. “I am too old and too rigid for war, Ted—war, or peace, or whatever this is.”

For a while they did not speak.

“You’ll keep working,” she said, “for the television men?”

“As long as I can,” he said. “I wasn’t cut out for Wizarding life. You know it. I know it.”

“I wasn’t, either,” she murmured, and that was the dirty secret, the poisonous word, the word that he silenced with a kiss.

But it was truth, all the same.

Truth was a scarce commodity in times of war.

_There’s a new order a-coming,_ she thought, as Ted drifted off to sleep in her arms. She held him tight, and she held him close, and she held him as long as she could. _And it is not mine._


End file.
